Quick SNES roundup

Nothing sees in a Sunday morning like a good cup of coffee and a few random SNES games. I grabbed a handful of carts to try out (Gods, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters and Kirby’s Ghost Trap), and thought I’d give the worlds smallest review – possibly at planck scale – on each. Enjoy!

Gods for the SNES is a game I scrutinized a bit closer than I ordinarily would, mainly because my first (and lengthy) experience with this games was on its original home, the Amiga. I was a little disappointed to tell you the truth, but with an aspect that only a die hard Amiga fan would notice. The game play of the SNES port is faithful enough, you are cast as an ancient Greek warrior out to prove himself worthy of equal footing with the Gods by thumping a whole host of demons across level after level of platform gaming. You get upgraded weapons, power-ups and come up against a whole variety of timing traps and puzzles on your quest. The bit I felt let down by, was the sound.

The almost legendary Amiga Gods soundtrack by John Foxx has been completely and utterly trampled for the Super Nintendo version of the game, replaced with a tinny, unspectacular soundtrack that persists from the title screen through to the levels themselves. Can changing a sound track ruin a game? For me, sure. To understand the contrast between the SNES and Amiga sound track, check out this comparison.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters was a surprisingly enjoyable game. I’m a big of a fighting game fan, I can wax lyrical for hours about Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, so to find a title that has elements of one or the other but with a fresh coat of paint and a different character roster, is always nice. TMNTTF (Because there’s no way I’m writing that title out in full, again) features all the instantly recognizable characters from TMNT, such as the four turtles, Shredder as well as some faces from the Comic book series. The fighting is smooth, with special moves abound and some bright colorful backgrounds complete with Street Fighter-esque scrolling floors. I haven’t had much to do with the Turtles franchise since I was about 13, but this game is heaps of fun whether you’re a fan or not. Highly recommended.

Kirby’s Ghost Trap didn’t really do much for me. Easy to sum up as a Tetris style puzzle game, you rotate and move little coloured blobs (ghosts? I’m not sure) to fit into colour sequence to clear them. Clear enough to cause a chain reaction and rocks will fall from the top of the screen onto the other players blobs. Maybe, just maybe if you’d never played a Tetris-like game in your life, this would be gripping stuff. As it is, it’s highly unlikely that you haven’t, so Kirby’s Ghost Trap is a bit of a yawn.